Like the Falling of Small Stones
by Bright Yellow Bumblebee
Summary: What if someone had visited Yukimura whilst he had been in the hospital?  What if this visit called forth an avalanche?


After realising I had been diagnosed with the same disease Yukimura Seiichi has, I felt compelled to write about him. So, when my fingers should have been struggling to type the next chapter of the Psi Gene (which is up by the way), I decided to do this little oneshot.

I don't own anything associated with PoT.

* * *

He hurt.

He knew his limbs wouldn't move and they ached because of their sudden inactivity, but he never knew it would hurt so much.

Logically, he knew the inactivity of his muscles was causing the cells to lyse and break down, resulting in a build-up of myoglobin other proteins. These proteins were clogging up his kidneys and causing them to fail. This failure made the urea levels in his blood increase and left him feeling itchy and pained.

He knew this, but it didn't make him feel any better. For years, he had been used to a degree of quite strenuous activity on a daily basis, but now his legs and arms were crying. He couldn't even walk to the bathroom without help.

How the mighty had fallen.

To think it all started about four weeks ago with backache. He'd noticed his back was hurting, uncharacteristic for him. He thought nothing of it; he just took some ibuprofen and carried on. He started to get more alarmed when his arms and legs got weaker. It began with little things, he dropped his racket during practice, he fell more than usual, and he couldn't hold his pen.

And it got worse. Eventually, his mother took him to the doctor, who looked about as disinterested in his symptoms as he did, until he tapped his legs and arms for his reflexes. Yukimura wasn't a doctor, but he had had these tests done before and that hadn't happened before.

He was admitted to hospital and subjected to a barrage of tests that were scarily normal, except a raised white cell count. Apparently, that meant there was something inflamed in his body. All other possible causes were excluded until he was left with one thing.

Guillain-Barre syndrome.

He'd read everything he could find about it. Words had leapt out at him. Treatable. Intensive care. Plasmapheresis (1). Ventilation. Paralysis.

Paralysis. Paralysis. Paralysis. Paralysis. It echoed around his head, circling and spiralling until he could think of nothing else. All his dreams and those of his team.

They would be gone. His tennis would be gone.

One of the nurses, possibly feeling sorry for the morose blue haired boy, had wheeled him up to the roof where if he looked far enough westward he could see a tennis court. She thought it might make him feel better.

It only reminded him of what he had lost. As he sat, unable to muster the strength to wheel himself away, he began to lose what little hope remained. There was no way he could regain his lost mobility. There was no way he could move the way he used to.

There was no way he could perform as well as he could.

He sat despondently staring into the sunset. Even his loyal fuku-buchou couldn't rouse him from his melancholy. His stoic but steadfast black haired friend tried as hard as he could to engage him in a conversation but Sanada, for all his qualities, was not the best conversationalist on the team and certainly had difficulty starting discussions.

And Yukimura, feeling sadistic in his depression, took ruthless advantage of that and remained silent until Sanada followed suit. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want comfort. He wanted to spend just a while alone.

With nothing but his despair.

Eventually, his longest companion left with a sigh, saying something about the team as he left. And Yukimura stayed behind, partially due to his arms' inability to push his wheelchair and partially because he couldn't be bothered.

He'd done it. He'd turned away his friends, he'd isolated himself from him family, he'd lost everything he'd valued. His friends, family and tennis.

The oranges of the sky gradually changed to purples and blues as the night came upon him, accompanied by the temperature getting colder. He just sat and watched.

"What are you doing up here?" a voice called from behind him and Yukimura started. At first, he thought it was one of the staff who'd come up to try and get him back inside but then he realised that the voice was much too high for any but one of the prepubescent male.

Craning his head around in the chair, he looked through the white drying sheets to find the owner of the voice. His eyes darted left and right until they finally alighted upon the small figure almost shadowed behind on of the blankets.

It was a young boy, probably about 12 years old with a mop of greenish black hair and piercing golden eyes. He was dressed, oddly enough, in American clothing, jeans and a hoodie declaring itself to be from somewhere called Abercrombie and Fitch.

He approached Yukimura slowly and when he was stood by his side, it was with somewhat sadistic amusement that Yukimura realised the boy wasn't much taller than him when seated.

"Just watching the sky" he replied, smiling gently. The boy glanced at him out of the corner of his eye with a look that no child should be able to produce.

"Uh-huh," he said in a way that indicated he didn't believe him.

They remained in silence for a while, both looking off into the distance until the little one besides him saw something of interest.

"There's a tennis court down there," he commented and Yukimura absently nodded as well. "So you had already noticed it."

A few more minutes of silence and then a beat. "Do you play?"

Such an innocent question and Yukimura burst out laughing. He was sure he sounded slightly hysterical to the boy but he couldn't help it. He laughed so much he started to cry and the tears rolled down his cheeks like rain. The boy looked over to him like he was strange but to his credit; he didn't inch away from the slightly older boy with questionable sanity.

The laughter stopped slowly and Yukimura wiped his cheeks brushing away the last stray tears. "I used to. Not anymore."

The boy looked curious. "Why not?"

Clearly the boy was a bit stupid. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm sitting in a wheelchair," Yukimura said somewhat scathingly. The boy countered the acerbic tone by crossing his arms and leaning on the linked fence to face Yukimura with a glare.

"Again, why not?"

And Yukimura lost it. Weeks of frustration, inactivity, boredom and depression overflowed at that point and he couldn't contain them any more behind his thin veneer of geniality.

"Because my body doesn't work! It doesn't do what I want it to! I tell my arm to hold a racket but it won't. I tell my legs to run but they don't move. I'm trapped in my own body. I can't get out and I can't go on thinking I'll get better anymore!"

"Do you know what I have?" he carried on without waiting for an answer and the little boy let him rant to his heart's content. "I have Guillain-Barre syndrome. It is a disease where my nerves stop working. I can't move the way I want to. If I don't get treatment, it'll affect my respiratory muscles and I'll suffocate to death."

"Is it treatable?" the boy asked calmly.

"Yes, but their idea of a favourable prognosis is anything but death. There is a ten percent chance I'll be paralysed for life and then where will I be?"

"My tennis team strives for victory and accepts nothing less. I am a burden to my team and to everyone. They have a captain in name only. I can't lead them if I can't even lead myself out of this."

He didn't notice, but the further into his tirade he got, the more upset he was getting, until he practically screamed his final words with tears pouring from his eyes. He seemed to collapse into himself, curling up as much as his defunct body would let him, cracked and broken.

The boy let him rant, let him sob, let him cry. He said nothing as he vented his spleen and stood silently until he finished and sat in an exhausted state of shock.

"If you want this to be the end of you and your tennis, then let it," he said quietly, not looking at him. Yukimura raised his head, silently watching him.

"Ten percent paralysis means ninety percent not. You can crunch numbers all day and they'd be in your favour. But numbers can lie."

Here, he adopted a much more aggressive pose and leaned forwards, putting his hands on both of Yukimura's arm rests.

"Life and tennis are only over when you say they are over. Nothing can stop you if you don't let it stop you. The road to recovery will be long and hard, but the pain will be worth it in the end," he got right into Yukimura's face and practically whispered his next words.

"Mada mada dane." And then he was gone, like a whisper on the wind.

Yukimura sat there for a while mulling over the strange boy's words until a distraught nurse came running up to the roof. Frenzied apologies were uttered and he was wheeled back inside. He was put into his bed and rested in the dark.

'Mada mada dane huh?' he thought, with his first real smile in weeks.

'Not over yet. No, more like, never give up.'

* * *

Weeks passed and his mood improved. He listened to Akaya's stories with a small smile and thanked Sanada for his continued support. He never knew the boy's name or why he was there and he never found these things out, but his message always stayed with him. Like the falling of small stones, his words had triggered an avalanche within Yukimura.

_Never give up._

He underwent his therapy and felt awful afterwards. He felt like giving up and lying in bed all day, but he forced himself to move.

_Never give up._

He struggled for the first few weeks, fighting his way back to movement and tennis. The first time he moved his fingers properly, he was ecstatic.

_Never give up._

All those times he struggled down the physiotherapist's frames, attempting to walk properly, he didn't stop. Drenched in sweat, he thought of his precious team and that strange boy and he kept moving.

_Never give up._

Running followed walking and gripping followed finger twitching. The first time he held his racket in over three months was an amazing moment. He felt reborn. He felt empowered.

It was another two months after that before he could play a full match and another two until he could win one. Even then, it was against a non-regular member, but he wasn't discouraged. He worked hard and it hurt. He was exhausted after every day. Tired in a way tennis had never achieved but it was worth it.

Worth it to see the faces of his team when he eventually won his matches against his regulars, culminating in a match between Sanada and himself. When he won that one, he knew he was back and stronger than ever.

Standing on the court, he waited for his opponent to arrive. It was the final match of the national tournament and his and the opposing team were tied with two wins apiece. He stood silently, waiting for the beginning.

He'd been approached by a young, red haired boy who wanted a match, but he had managed to destroy him easily.

He waited. He hoped the other would arrive. He'd been waiting for this since that night all those months ago.

Standing with his eyes closed, he heard the steadily increasing volume of the crowd as they began to cheer. He opened his eyes to see a black haired boy standing across the court from him, still as short as before but still as cocky.

His inspiration.

He owed so much to this boy. The one who returned his determination. Returned his hope. Returned his drive.

His tennis.

He would pay the boy back now. He would show him the tennis he restored. He would show him and the world that he wouldn't give up.

"We now begin the final match of the National Tournament. Rikkaidai's Yukimura Seiichi versus Seigaku's Echizen Ryoma."

Across the court, the little black haired boy smirked.

"Mada mada dane."

Yukimura mirrored the expression. 'Indeed.'

And then, he served.

* * *

(1) Guillian-Barre is treatable, but not with surgery as shown in the anime. It is through a method called plasmapheresis, where they remove your blood, run it through a filter and replace it. Kind of like a dialysis for kidney failure.

The title comes from Tolkein's The Two Towers: "The coming of Merry and Pippin will be like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains." In a way the arrival of Echizne was like a small stone that triggered Yukimura's determination and drive.

As always, R&R

Bumble x


End file.
